Looking back at these drawings from 1982, what a shock it is to add up the years and acknowledge that nearly twenty-five years have passed. Seeing this chalk pastel drawing after so many years, at first I couldn't remember the title I had given it.
What is coming out of this process of retrospection is that I am remembering how much I have forgotten. As I looked at today's image, I thought I would have to give it a new name, but then the words "wild blue sky of day," from a poem I had written in the early 1980s, came back to me. I couldn't remember the title of the poem but knew where to look for it and found that it was titled "A Nation of Sleepless Woman with Moon and Birds." The last two lines were the title I had given to this drawing. A NATION OF SLEEPLESS WOMEN WITH MOON AND BIRDS
Awake and alert
As full and fragmented as the moon
Rising and reflecting
In a western sea
We hear night birds
Singing in the shadows
Mocking darkness
Mocking darkness
The moon asks an impossible question:
Do I control you
Or do you control me
In my circular journey
We ask the moon an impossible question:
Do we control you
Or do you control us
In our cyclical journey
We hear night words
We sing in the shadows
Mocking darkness
Mocking darkness
Imagine us at dawn
A nation of sleepless women with moon and birds
Just above the hills of childhood
Caught between impossible questions
And the wild blue sky of day.
Sometime in February I will be coming to a drawing/painting I did which I called, "Woman Trying to Remember What She is Trying to Forget."
How could I forget that I am a poet, too?
